Thursday, February 20, 2014

That business plan I was all fired up about last year? Not really working out. I finished a book in my new shared universe and started another, Zombie Jesus Day (ZJD), with plans to keep going while putting other projects aside.

Instead, I’ve spent the last several months working on I, Suicide (a spinoff novel from The Cupid War) and a Doctor Who fanfiction story. I, Suicide will be a hard sell, and I can’t make any money at all from fanfiction! What happened to the great plan?

What the hell went wrong?

Basically, I kept giving priority to other projects. A lot of those projects were articles for Toronto.com. Those had to take priority because they had deadlines. And they paid. In money. There was also a short story I wrote for an anthology (they rejected it). Each time one of those came up, ZJD had to be put on hold.

Then, when I was typing up what I had of ZJD, I had to have another project to work on during the day (see this post here for more details). I picked up I, Suicide again, and discovered I had a passion for that story once more. And when I was typing up the new chapters of I, Suicide, I tried to get back into ZJD. Only I couldn’t. I’d lost the mojo for it. I ended up doing an I, Suicide short story instead, and picked up the thread of a Section K story (the one with the chocolate zombies, mentioned in my last post), and got into the afore-mentioned fanfic.

So, what’s the plan now? Finish I, Suicide and the Section K story, then see about picking ZJD back up once more. Then start a new novel in the ZJD world.

Wednesday, February 19, 2014

There comes a time in any storyteller’s career where he/she will ask him/herself, does this project I’m working on make sense? Is it going anywhere? Am I writing myself into a corner from which I cannot hope to escape?

I’m currently working on a Section K short story where Agent Johnny Tall and a mysterious woman known as the Witch must defeat a horde of zombies made entirely out of chocolate. Why are these zombies made out of chocolate? There is a reason, of course. I’m just afraid it isn’t a very good one.

The chocolate zombies have an objective. I haven’t entirely worked out what that is, yet. Various scenarios have gone through my mind, and concepts are coming together. The thing I keep running into, however, is this: is this objective best brought about with the use of chocolate zombies?

Did any of you see The Wild, Wild West? That Will Smith movie from 1999 that featured a giant steam-powered tarantula? The villain, Loveless, had created this metal monster in order to kidnap the President and force him to surrender the country, or something. One critic wrote in his review, ‘wasn’t there an easier way?’ By which I'm sure he meant, was kidnapping the President an objective that necessitated the construction and deployment of a giant metal steam-powered spider?

And don’t get me started on the anti-aircraft gun atop the metal spider. Put there, no doubt, in case someone invented a flying machine several decades before the Wright Brothers. Lucky thing, too, because without it Loveless would not have been able to shoot down the heroes in a flying machine invented several decades before the Wright Brothers first flight. Because you can never be too careful, I suppose.

But I digress. The point I was taking the scenic route to is, am I writing a giant steam-powered tarantula into my story, in the shape of chocolate zombies?

I sure hope not. However, even if the concept still doesn’t work by the time I reach the story’s end, not to worry – that is what rewrites are for. It might seem preferable to plot each bit of the story out first, but where’s the fun in that? I trust my creative process. If it says chocolate zombies are the way to go, who am I to argue? I’m just the author, man. I just work here. ;)